Los Angeles District Attorney race between Alan Jackson, Jackie Lacey

Los Angeles County will have a new chief prosecutor for the first time in more than a decade, at a time when the District Attorney's Office is grappling with increased responsibilities and shrunken budgets.

The choice is between retiring DA Steve Cooley's second-in-command, Chief Deputy District Attorney Jackie Lacey, or prosecutor Alan Jackson, assistant head deputy of the Major Crimes Division.

Both had pulled off stunning upsets in the June primary - knocking out better-known and better-funded Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to face each other in the Nov. 6 runoff.

Lacey appears to have a significant fundraising advantage, collecting more than $500,000 in the last quarter (July-September) to Jackson's $180,000.

Lacey also has endorsements from state Attorney General Kamala Harris, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Sheriff Lee Baca, while Jackson is backed by former Mayor Richard Riordan and former Gov. Pete Wilson.

Lacey stressed her 16 years in the courtroom, followed by 12 years on Cooley's management team, make her far better qualified than Jackson to become the next district attorney.

"If you take someone directly from the courtroom who has so little management and leadership experience, they will spend their first four to five years in office just learning how to run the office, and we just can't afford to have that on-the-job training for the district attorney," she said.

"Running this office requires a very different skill set than running cases in the courtroom," she added. "You really need to know a lot more than that."

Jackson countered the public wants "a real prosecutor to lead the largest municipal prosecutorial agency in the country" because "we are at a crossroads in public safety."

"Based on laws that have been passed over the last year, I think crime rates are going to begin rising and people have to be sure that their public safety officials are prepared to meet those challenges head on," he said.

"What I would bring to the office is the vision, the experience, the knowledge of a true prosecutor, someone who's been on the front line in the last two decades, putting the worst of the worst in jail while also understanding that we can't simply handcuff our way out of problems."

Their plans for the District Attorney's Office are strikingly similar.

Both candidates have pledged to expand Alternative Sentencing Courts, which give women, veterans, drug offenders and the mentally ill a chance to enter treatment instead of jail. They want increased focus on rehabilitation instead of incarceration.

"Mr. Jackson talks about how he will implement alternative sentencing, but I was part of the team that helped launch those courts," Lacey said. "I have intricate knowledge about how to make those courts work and how to expand them."

Both candidates also to expand the Public Integrity Unit, which investigates corruption, and to invest more resources to fight gang crimes, environmental crimes and high-tech crimes.

"I want to ensure that public corruption is a zero-tolerance issue," Jackson said. "I also want to modernize the DA's Office so it can more robustly conduct investigations of cybercrimes, bank fraud and other financial crimes, Internet piracy and sexual predators who utilize high-tech devices to target victims."

They believe the changes can be made without blowing the budget, which declined during the economic recession, from $335 million in 2007 to $324 million in 2011.

This fiscal year, the nation's largest local prosecutorial office, with almost 1,000 attorneys, 300 peace officers and 800 support staff, has an adopted budget of $328 million.

If elected, Lacey would be the first African-American, and the first woman, to become the county's district attorney.

"The fact that I'm a viable and serious candidate means another barrier has been broken down," she said. "It gives other people hope that they too can be leaders in our law enforcement and justice system."

Lacey's parents moved to Los Angeles, in the Crenshaw District, to escape discrimination in the South. Her father was a lot-cleaning employee for the city and her mother a garment factory worker.

Lacey was the first in her family to attend college, graduating from UC Irvine and USC Law School.

In the District Attorney's Office, Lacey helped develop an automated program that tracks gang crimes, as well as programs to go after animal cruelty, gun possession and graffiti cases. She took a lead role in creating alternative sentencing courts.

As a prosecutor, she successfully tried the county's first race-based hate crime murder case against three Nazi Low Riders, prosecuted a convicted child molester for 19 additional counts involving other children, and put a murderer on death row.

Jackson, meanwhile, was raised by a single mother in Texas, served as a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force, and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and Pepperdine Law School.

He began his career in the DA's Hard Core Gang Unit and currently is a leader in the DA's elite Major Crimes Unit.

He put away record producer Phil Spector for murdering actress Lana Clarkson, and won a conviction against the man who killed race-car driver Mickey Thompson and his wife 19 years earlier.

He prosecuted the man who kidnapped 17-year-old Lily Burk from Southwestern Law School and murdered her, as well as Florencia-13 gang leader Johnnie Espinoza, who murdered two teenagers and a 3-year-old in separate incidents.